Mountain Cog
Mountain bike podcast that will make you laugh and learn. Featuring a wide range of passionate guests. Available everywhere (Apple, Spotify etc).
Mountain Cog
104 - Bike Shop Secrets: Disc Brake Squeal, Internal Routing Issues, Suspension Service (incl. Fork Stanchion Lube), & Pedal Cadence.
In this comprehensive bike maintenance episode, suspension expert Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins tackles the most common disc brake problems plaguing mountain bikers. Learn why your hydraulic disc brakes keep squealing despite new rotors and pads, how brake pad contamination occurs, and the proper bedding process for noise-free performance. Dane explains caliper alignment techniques, the debate between OEM vs aftermarket brake pads, and why sanding contaminated pads often fails to solve squealing issues.
The episode also covers essential suspension service knowledge including the difference between lower and full fork services, typical service intervals (50-100 hours), and why proper damper maintenance prevents costly blowouts. Plus, discover e-bike motor care secrets like optimal cadence settings to prevent overheating, dropper post storage tips to avoid expensive repairs, and professional cable routing solutions for internal systems. Whether you're dealing with squeaky brakes or planning suspension maintenance, this episode delivers actionable bike shop wisdom.
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I wonder if people think that you have that like on one of those record buttons. It's not no, you do it every time I do it quite a bit and I wonder if anyone still thinks it's what it's not.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:They think I'm smoking a bowl Something or a bong or something. I mean, that's why you're doing it. I don't even know the right language.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You're smoking the marijuana?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, I'm actually drinking a sparkling ice. Yeah, I'm actually drinking a sparkling ice.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I'm not drinking alcohol.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:You know why? Why I've been studying my data metrics and I'm finding out that every time I drink it, like all my biometrics on my data or my body just go to shit every time I drink Really, so I'm like so I've been drinking a ton less.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Is that like when they say beer gives you the shits? Is it the same thing?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I don't know, but my resting heart rate goes up. My oh, you're figuratively shit, okay, yeah, yeah like so, like my resting heart rate, my heart rate variability goes into the trash. My um, the frequency of my, my breathing gets super high, like everything goes crappy, and then I sleep like crap and so it's like wow, I don't think I should drink as much as I'm drinking, so I've just cut back a ton, not for any other, that like I'm just looking at the data, yeah Well, that's kind of cool, I mean.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I think a lot of people have sleep issues and a lot of people put back a couple before they go to bed and don't think about that. You know what's happening to their body, as those chemicals are are are entering everything in your body while you're sleeping.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, one of the things I'm I'm one of the things I'm doing for sure is like not drinking three or four hours before bed, which basically means like right, when I get off of work, I can have like one or two drinks and then I can't have any alcohol for the rest of the night.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, I my, uh, my wife a long time when I would drink a soda regularly like just for everything and I still do I'm. I've cut it down to like two a day. You know, I try to unless I go to restaurants, but, uh, my wife got me into drinking.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Um, my wife got me into, uh, drinking water, uh, more, cause I don't really drink much water, right, and so now I drink water before I go to bed. So when I get home from work, I don't drink anything but water for the rest of the night, and you know it's as much water as I drink. I don't get up and pee in the middle of the night you know I was going to ask you that, yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So I I don't know if it's just because I'm drinking water and not something else, cause I actually think that I have to pee more, like anything with caffeine or something because it's a diuretic right it pulls the liquid on your body. Yeah, yeah interesting I got a dad dad joke, okay, um. So I looked this one up. It took me about an hour, uh, because I was being super picky you really set this up to be and it's not a good joke.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I'm just gonna put that out there. It's not a very good joke. It's kind of you know, I want to say it's dirty but it's not. But it made it. It rung true with me because I do this all the time. So, um, how many bicyclists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:oh, how many bicyclists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I do not know uh 10 okay uh, so you need one to change it and nine others to argue about the aerodynamics, weight, lumens and, most importantly, color that one.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:That one would be good for tom from outbound lighting they don't even have 10 people man, that one was really not good I told you, you know, but I didn't play it off like it was good. I feel like we need to. We need, we owe our listeners like a second one. Okay, go for it okay so so, um.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So you know, I, when I was younger, I dated this girl. She's beautiful um, super nice girl, smart um, liked her a lot, spent a lot of time with her um, but she had a lazy eye okay, like not a big deal, except you never know where she's looking yeah, and so like I had to break out with her cause I was worried that she was seeing someone on the side.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Oh man.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Is that me better Is?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:it not any better. Uh, your delivery was great, thank you.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Thank you. So the joke sucked, but my delivery was good.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Better than mine. I'm reading it off my phone, which I had to save it as a picture, otherwise my phone would go to sleep. So right now, man.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So, uh, it's a Sunday, yep, and uh, we just got done doing a good ride.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Um, I do want to. Um, well, we'll talk about the ride in a little bit. Um, but yesterday I dedicated most of the day to doing two things. One is watching hockey, because the NHL is back after the Four Nations tournament, which was fan-fucking-tastic.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Was it like the Lakers and the Steelers? Yeah, perfect yeah.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:It's exactly what it was. But then I also did bike maintenance all day and I ran into a bunch of um problems, uh, and so I wanted to kind of talk about some of those things. Okay, uh, if you're cool with that, sure, and the first one is, um, and this is kind of an age old um problem that we've had forever, and so I thought it might be good, cause I think you know everyone at some point deals with this, so I wanted to thought you could share your bike shop wisdom with our listeners on a couple of these topics. Um, and then, and then I have a question specifically about and this is about hydraulic disc brakes.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Um, and we've put the dominion, um, uh, the haze dominion a4s, yep, uh, so that's the four pistons on lacy switchblade, so it's kind of like a, you know, long travel trail or short travel enduro bike kind of. Yeah, um, and her front, and it's got a big rotor, it's got two or three rotor on the front. Uh, it's got a shimano rotor on it, okay, which I know it doesn't have the haze rotors because they don't make the haze rotors with center lock and these actual tires have center lock. So, um, we couldn't put haze rotors on there, but they seem to fit just fine and they work okay yeah, hazel hazel, get mad, but um, we've had pretty good luck with those rotors and that break, no problem.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Um, some company, every company, is like you gotta use our stuff, you know, and it's because they test to that stuff and and so they can't really you know one, they don't want to be like yeah, shimano stuff's great because they're selling their stuff yeah please.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:But two they are testing to their stuff. They want the brake to be the best that they've tested and have the best experience for the rider, and so they'll always kind of be like you got to use our stuff Practically. That's the difference between rotors sometimes is a big one and sometimes not at all. Like TRP makes one that is extra thick is a big one and sometimes not at all. Like TRP makes one that is extra thick. Yeah, and if you don't use the TRP rotor with their brakes, you'll get a very different experience than if you use their rotor. And so sometimes it matters and then sometimes it does.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So if you're matching brakes to the rotors um, talk to your bike shop. They can probably help you figure out.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, If it'll work if it'll be a big difference or not. Yeah, in this case I talked to you. I talked to to the Croto and said, hey, what do you guys, what do you guys think? And you guys both thought it would work All right. So so there's a whole bunch of things I want to talk about here. But but I got a squeaky. Make a resin rotor for the A4. It does not make a resin pad for the A4. They have a semi-metallic and a metallic.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I think they call it semi-metallic and centered. Yeah, so those are there too and this has been something they've been doing forever. A lot of bike companies their, their brakes will have different names, so, like Shimano is resin and metal, and then other companies will be organic, yep and metal or centered or something. So, uh, you kind of have to figure out which one they're saying. And then there's companies like cool stop and mtx, and there's a couple of other companies.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:There's a bunch, yeah, where they make a bunch of different versions, yep, and so usually when I'm looking to bring pads into the shop, I have two requirements. One, that is, there's one that's quieter and then one that tends to last longer, and that's usually kind of what you end up with, one or the other. Sometimes you can get both in one package, it just depends. And then if you're on a downhill bike in Arizona because we don't have wet conditions if you're on a downhill bike and you're just going through your pads too fast, you go metal. And then if you want a little quieter pads, you're more cross-country and you just don't want to make a noise.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:The usually the softer resin pads so so they've got semi-metallic on there. You know purportedly the quieter version of the two options there's a centered and a semi-metallic and, uh, can't get this thing to quiet down, okay.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So so the first thing I do is I'm Lacey, had like dropped her bike recently and I'm testing the wheel out and there's like a chunk in the wheel, okay, like your chunk in the break. You can hear it's like clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, okay. And so I inspect the rotor and find out that it's it's like bent, and it's bent in a weird way, not in a way that you can repair it, I don't think, unless you, like heated it up or something. Then I don't know what you're doing. So, long story short, I replaced the rotor. Okay, put a brand new rotor on. Yeah, uh, it's the same rotor. Xt 203 center lock ice tech okay, a good rotor brand new.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Um, get it on. Go through the bedding process. It's still squealing like crazy. Take the, take the pads out, get some really fine sandpaper.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You can tell me if I totally did this wrong so far. You sound like everybody else, so that's good. Yeah, you're doing what everybody else does Okay.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I don't know if that's good or bad, but we'll see. Took some sandpaper, laid it down on the on the concrete concrete, so it was completely flat. Yep, Put the pad on top of it so I got a real nice flat and just kind of there was black stuff on the outside of the pad. Yeah, Glazing, yeah, whatever glazing. Yeah, Got all that stuff off. Got down to where the pad looked brand new again. It didn't take much. Put them back on still squeaking like a motherfucker. Okay, what can I do?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Man, there's so many variables so I got to throw that disclaimer out there, because we see all types of situations that cause that. There's been some weird ones in the past. There's been some really common ones. Usually when a bike comes into the shop and it's got squealy brakes most common that we see and I'm not saying this is your case, but the most common that we see is somebody has contaminated the pad somehow. So pads tend to be kind of a porous. If you were to look at them really close with a microscope, they look kind of like sponges, yep, and all of those crevices will take in oils and so handling with your hands you want to avoid that, um so don't touch the actual pad surface or your rotor.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:That's the other thing um it is uh, uh, the right way to clean a rotor, I think is with rubbing alcohol yeah, so we tend to clean it with rubbing alcohol to get any oils off of it
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:sometimes you will use abrasives to scuff it, to try and take the glazing that may be on the rotor, and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. So when you get these weird circumstances, the hardest thing is that trying to figure out what's actually causing it. So I'll give you an example of a weird one that bike mechanics dealt with a while back with avid brakes on specialized. Okay and um, the specialized on one particular bike made this weird brake mount that was kind of um they used to have instead of post mount. They had international standard ist, yep, and they would stick up, you know. And then you'd use an adapter to get a bigger rotor. Um, what was happening is the brakes were fine but they were kind of vibrating because the the, the mount and the adapter brought them up so high that they could be. They were too high, you know they were too far away.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So the frequency like it was actually chattering Yep, yeah, and so we were.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:We were specialized dealer and we were dealing with this and trying to figure out how to fix it. And this is a while ago, so if nobody remembers this, don't worry.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Beefy mouth to like.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:No, the weirdest thing because we had to work with Specialized but then we had to work with Avid at the time was making the break and Avid at the time would give you brand new brakes, you know, like they would do anything, Like they were amazing. And back then so we would put a brand new set of brakes, brand new rotor on, and it would still do it. And at that point you're like, okay, wait, it's probably not the brake. At this point We've replaced everything.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:What Avid found out because they were having problems too and they would go to the pits at races and try and figure the same issue out is because that setup was so far away from the actual beefiness of the frame. Yep, it would vibrate. And so they figured out and just, I don't know if it was trial and error or whatever, but there was a banjo on this uh caliper and instead of having it shoot straight to the frame and kind of um, kind of taper down to the frame and then gets it zip tied to the frame, which they do, they had this banjo uh, point straight down and then do a curve tied to the frame, which they do. They had this banjo point straight down and then do a curve, which kind of gave an extra brace. It used the hose as kind of a brace to stop that vibration and it worked. And so there was a whole generation of specialized that every time we brought them into the shop we would build them that way to get rid of that particular problem that caused those noises.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So, so let me just let me back up again. I'm going to come back to what you just said. So is it possible? Cause I ordered some new pads, um, which get delivered tomorrow, Cause Lacey's got to ride on Tuesday. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten from you guys, but you guys are closed on Monday.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That's cause we want to ride our bikes, which is totally fine.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:No, but just know I'm going to buy things from Jensen every once in a while when we're close. Don't go with Jensen. It was the only place I could get them, but I knew we'd deliver them fast. But is it possible that the pads got something on them and they got contaminated? And even after I sanded it they're still contaminated.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, absolutely Cause um. So I'm going to talk real generic about this stuff, because your per your instance may be different than everybody else's and the biggest thing that we see is this contamination Right, and that um is usually the pad picks up some sort of oil, um, either from skin or a lot of people don't realize when you're washing your bike, it's the water is splashing oil from your drive train over to the brake or just from your bike in general. I mean, we we get bikes in where the seals are blown on the shock and they're leaking all over the break.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, that's pretty obvious.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, but um, we even have, you know, squealing issues on brand new bikes. Where you're in, like your case, where you're trying to figure this out, contamination usually means that something's gotten on the pad, the number one thing that everybody does, that bike shops tend not to do, and I'll tell you why this is Is sand them yeah. Or they sand them, they torch them, they put them in the oven. I can't tell you how many things I've seen people do.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Right.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And you read stuff online and everybody has some suggestion. Just put them in the oven. Do this yeah.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Rub them on the concrete Use a file.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Only go vertical with your file, or no? No, you got to go horizontal. Whatever, they come up with all these different things when you go to a bike shop. Most common, the bike shop's going to be like we're going to put new pads on, and here's why. Uh, because I have seen that scenario where people spend so much time trying to get that squeal out of that particular pad that's been contaminated and it's deep into the pad. It soaks it up like a sponge, and so the bike shop has to charge you for that time. So you don't want to pay the bike.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:It's actually cheaper just to replace the pads on it.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, and then it's fixed and done. You don't want a mechanic like spending all that time doing that stuff and charging for it. And and I've had these conversations on chairlifts with buddies you know at at pits, you know at races and yeah, you know you can sometimes get a contaminated pad to stop squealing, but it doesn't stop very well, um, it's still not stopping. And so you're using a lot more finger force, uh, and pulling a lot harder to get the same breaking power and so, um, so this contamination thing that happens is really common, uh, and that is something that is causes the number one I would say squeal. If it's not like water, like when you go through water on any break, it'll squeal for a while until it dries out. So, but if there's a lot of oil and oil you know getting it's kind of will stick around.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So my second plan was to take Lacey up to the top of pistol Hill and just have her run laps, holding her front brake, the whole way down. That's not going to do it either, right?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So so what I do to fix a brand new bike, the squealing? In most cases it's the bed in process. That is really the issue, and the bed in process can sometimes be really straightforward and easy and sometimes it can be really a pain in the ass. And um, it's funny because one of our listeners has this they have these bed in machines. Yeah, that you can. Uh, most of the time, a bike shop owns one. Yeah, especially if you got bad weather and you're indoors a lot and you don't want to be outside riding a bike for 20 minutes trying to bed in the brakes, and or you just don't have an area to do that, like you're in a, a mall that just doesn't have space.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Um and uh, this bedding machine will actually turn the wheel. Yeah, um, it'll sense, I believe, the force. Uh, I got a little tutorial from our listener, brian, about it, but I didn't really memorize it, so, so I may get some details wrong, but it it senses the force and then you, it tells you when to apply, apply the brakes and it gives you kind of uh, you know, an idea of how to bet in, which is really cool so, and I imagine you can do it a lot faster yeah, something that's automatically much more, much more um, are you guys?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:are you thinking about getting one?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:no, they're super expensive, yeah, and we can just ride it outside so in arizona doesn't matter but the bread and bed in process is kind of different on different brakes. The idea is to get the brakes to mate with the rotor and then two things happen you need to heat them up when you do this and when you do the you just heat them up by using them yes, yeah, you don't want to take a torch to them you don't want to put them in the oven.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That's not what you're doing. What you're doing is getting them to basically put the brakes on and get them hot enough to where some of the material from the pad starts bedding in to the rotor and that creates an abrasive uh surface that they, they both enjoy. You know, if that, if that makes sense, um, and then what happens is that you get more bite, uh, when this happens, and you tend to have less noise because they're at the same time, they're kind of beveling and that's something that people don't think about is they're kind of conforming to the angle of the rotor.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So one of the things that you may be dealing with is if you had a misaligned caliper or if your caliper isn't perfectly straight, for instance, and there's two different planes of straightness. So there's the side to side, and then there's also, basically, if your post mounts aren't flush, and so there's tools that we use to basically mill those and face them they call it facing and that flattens them out, because sometimes the fork will have a slight angle to it. So when you tighten down the caliper, no matter what, you've got one edge of the pad hitting the rotor and the other side has got the opposite edge hitting.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so they come in at an angle and they will take a while. So I have bed-in brakes for like 20 minutes. No joke, so hard that I've beveled that pad to where the noise goes away, because now that pad has it's worn down it's worn down on those edges and so there's a way past it. But sometimes if it's bad, you know you, you can't get past it and you have to go, uh, basically machine those post mounts so interesting.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So when you guys set them up initially, well, first of all Sumart makes that little tool. I gave you one that actually spreads the except except doesn't work. Works great for me.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, on four piston.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Well, you can just do two at a time.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Oh, okay.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Can you Cause? Usually when you push two out, the other two want to push.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've only used it on the two piston.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, and that's that's the first thing I said when I saw that tool. I'm like, hey, this will only work on two piston.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So all we need to do though, we're going to try to solve this right here, but all we need to do is replace those washers with something big enough, does make sense, because it's just a magnet oh, oh, I got you, I got you, you can so on that tool, we're talking on that tool anyways um, and then I've got this, another little tool that I put on my rotor and it slides, you know, inside between the pads and the rotor. Yep, and then I loosen the caliper.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I pull the brakes, tighten the caliper bolts, then I take that little tool out and it's just a little spacer on each side. That gives you, like you know, I don't, I don't even know how much, but just enough to where they're not touching. That typically lines it up.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Like that usually works. We do, like I do, the cheater method all the time. Where what's the cheater method?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:you kind of have the caliper bolts fairly you want them cinched down to where like still move it, but yeah, like a quarter turn will tighten it, but it still can move.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And then you pull the brake and hold the brake and you want to you, you want to have the wheel kind of pushing towards the pad or pushing the caliper, as it's clamped on the rotor, towards the either the stay or the fork, so that it's not backed off, and then you just kind of snug those down and then you can usually go to town, where that usually doesn't work. So that's kind of a rule of thumb. That kind of works sometimes, but not all the time. Uh, sometimes, though, the depending on the brake bolts, how the brake manufacturers design them, if they have the caliper positioning washers, you know those conical ones sometimes those develop a memory, so I have to break them apart and kind of spin them around, uh, so that they don't have the same memory, because sometimes they'll try and put the caliper at the same angle.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Um, so there's lots of little techniques that you kind of run into trying to figure this out. In other words, there's no right answer. Yeah, but my most go-to when I have a problem break is I need to sight the caliper. So I need to look through the caliper, usually through the brake pads you're just lining it up?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:yep, yeah, so you can see. You see light on both sides. Yeah, shine a flashlight through the flashlight or a light box.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Sometimes we'll make a light box which is kind of like just a. Just think of like fluorescent light that's rectangular. You can the ground.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so you can get a good view. And then you can really kind of start to see it. And sometimes you have to sight straight down. But sometimes you have to look through the pads, like you're the rotor from the rotor side, okay, so not straight down through the pad, the hole that's usually in the caliper. So the key there is to make sure that you're really getting that thing perfectly aligned. That'll reduce it before you go with the bed in process.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Right, right Okay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so trying to get that as straight as possible make sure your torque is good on your bolts so that there's nothing loose, yep, and then repeat the bed in process. This is why brakes are a pain in the ass.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:It's a pain in the ass. Yeah, I mean like I was just looking down.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:we one topic, we're 23 minutes in yeah I know, are we really jesus? And we're not. We've just started because, oh man, get me started on fluids and like your tool. Let's talk about your tool real quick.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Okay, sumart makes this tool. That, I think, is super cool. Yes, and it will push. You know, like historically, when you pull the pads out, sometimes the pistons are, like you know, still out. They're self-adjusted.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, they're self-adjusted.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So I used to just take and I don't know, bike mechanic taught me this years ago I used to just take, like a tire iron and push them back in. Yep, yeah. But then, like, I ended up getting one and I didn't understand this because someone had done a lever bleed, uh-huh, and they didn't. They didn't, um do your pads out, yeah and they didn't put a block in yep, and so what ended up happening was there was more fluid in the system, exactly right, that happens a lot and so I couldn't.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I was like losing my mind. Yeah, I couldn't get the pistons. I didn't understand what was going on. I couldn't get the pistons. I didn't understand what was going on. I couldn't get the pistons back in. I ended up chipping one of the pistons because they're ceramic, which is shitty but and then I ultimately figured I was like sat back and like what the hell's going on here and I was like, oh, there's probably too much fluid in the system. So I, you know, uncapped it at the, at the, at the lever, and pushed them in and a little bit of fluid came out and I was like, all right, that's exactly what it was. But I bought that. In my struggle to figure out what the hell was going on, how I was going to fix this, I bought that sumart tool, yeah, and it worked awesome, but I was only using it on a two piston, to your point, because it's only set up to push two at one time yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So describing this tool is basically it's got two plates on it that are look like the, like a rotor or like like a brake, their washers piston, yeah and um, and then what happens is, as you screw it, there's a wedge that comes in from one, both sides, that evenly pushes them outward, yeah, and so you put it between the pistons. As you tighten it, it evenly is supposed to push those pistons back in, which is what you want to do. So, um, but the first thing I saw when I saw this tool is I'm like that only works on two piston, it won't work on four. And when you have a four piston uh system, they are all linked. So if you push one in, the other three will move slightly. Uh, if you push two in two, other ones will move. You've got to push them all in.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So we just got to mod it, so it pushes all four at the same time yeah, and then I've got a. I've got a thing in my head I don't know that I can explain it in words right now, but I got a thing in my head that I think will work.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It would be easy to make a piece that goes in there, but that's all I'm saying. But you would have to make that piece. Different size for different calipers, right, because the length of a four piston pad is not always consistent is different yeah, so it gets a little complicated.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:The two piston is way easier, so, um, so that tool scared the shit out of me when I saw it, because I'm like this is not good because this is marketed towards consumers. And you touched on exactly why it scares me. Because, uh, shimano is a good example. They make, uh, ceramic pistons and it is very common that we see a ceramic piston cracked or chipped or broken because somebody's trying to reset their pistons and they've, you know, under whatever reason, they've gotten something in there to try and buy it back. But maybe they didn't crack the bleed port open. They didn't know that part of the the process.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:They didn't know that they could be overfilled with like my dumb ass well, and, and then that gets expensive because I had to replace the brake.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe you can buy that piston. I don't know, there's like aftermarket ones that we've tried. Sometimes it's a they'll. They'll just leak right off the bat. You know like you can go on ebay and and amazon and get them. Um, we got one set for a Um, and I think we were able to get them to work, because so the way those pistons work is there is a seal in there, you know, uh, and it's usually a square seal. So once the piston either comes out all the way or cracks, you've now get a get all the crap out of there, and then you've got to get the new piston in without cutting that seal. And so if that seal, and so if that seal has been cut either in the cracking process or just by putting the new one in, it'll start leaking and, lo and behold, you'll have contaminated pads before you know it, Probably half of our listeners that have never worked on a disc brake before like what the fuck are these guys talking about?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Well, yeah, and this is really a common thing that changing your own pads should be easy. But the first thing you should do is check online or go to your local shop for a quick tutorial. The first thing you'll hear at a bike shop in most cases that you need to get some sort of bleed apparatus that attaches to the lever. And you know you'll. You know, a lot of people look at us like what are you talking? I just want to put pads in. I can do that, you know, but these hydraulic brake pads, they self-adjust, which means that, uh, the hydraulic system is designed to push in fluid and then the caliper pistons retract a certain amount just a millimeter to something exactly and that gives you the free spinning otherwise your rotor would constantly be so um, shout out to park tool.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:They've got really good youtube videos, yep, yeah and so, and they have some good ones on breaks. So check out park tool and, and you know, we've I've been talking with park. We're going to get them on the podcast sometime soon, which I'd like to do yeah, it'd be cool I really like their products.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Um, it'll be more dorky than this episode yeah all right, one one, one more question on disc brakes. Um, and before we drive our, so we don't drive our listeners to completely crazy, okay, for those that don't give a shit about disc brakes, but, um, is there an aftermarket company for pads that you would recommend?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Uh, that is a loaded question. So like cool stop, like I talked to those guys yeah, we, I've used cool stop before during covid.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:we tried everything out jaguar is a is like a distributor's brand.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That's kind of a generic pad um guys, my rep's gonna hate me. I think it's mtx mtx yeah, absolutely they're. They have her great things. I have two sets of them. I need to put them in bikes and try them. Um. You saw today that I'm kind of under breaker, like I don't, I don't, I don't have big brakes on my bikes um so he's riding a bike that is like an enduro style bike or whatever and, uh, definitely, if I was riding that bike, I would put, like you know, freaking.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:What are the new? What are the new?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:the new ones. The new ones are coming with. Uh, the shram mavens.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, mavens, I put Mavens on that bike right, but I look it down and Dane's got Dominion A2s on it. Yeah, two piston brakes Two piston brakes. I'm like what?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, and they're titanium ones, so they're light, with carbon levers and everything. They're so cool, so cool. But yeah, they have big pistons, they have, they have plenty of power for me and yeah, you don't break, I don't, I try not to. I used to have a team called no brakes, I mean our goal was to not use our brakes.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So right, um, but uh, when I break, I'm used to, I like brake brakes. That that modulate, it's really important to me and uh, so I'm not a huge fan of shimano because of that, because shimano's tend to put all their power right at the beginning yeah and then, as you pull harder and harder, they don't deliver an equal amount to the equal amount that you're pulling harder.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:We talked about this.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It's like a on off switch versus a dimmer switch yeah, and sram I've been happy with because they are dimmer switch, dimmer switch. Um haze are a happy medium because they have a really nice levers that have kind of a lever like a power modulation yeah, it's.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It's like it changes the ratio. Okay, and so as they come on, you get a decent amount of bite, but as you pull harder, you get harder and harder, in a good ratio, and uh, so I haven't needed too much. They're single piston pads aren't like tiny little cross-country you know, even though these are carbon and titanium.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:They have titanium bolts and carbon blades. Even though that they're the lightweight cross country one, they're not like. They're still beefy. Yeah, they're they. They have a good size piston so they deliver a lot of power with that one, you know two piston caliper.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I don't need any more. I put on like the world's lightest brake on my last e-bike and I. I was fine on trails, honestly, but I took it to sunrise and I about died so that's a bike park yeah, yeah, yeah, I doing a chair chairlift. Riding was bad with those was scary, yeah, and they were stupid light though like okay, but you didn't.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:You still haven't answered my question. Okay, is there an aftermarket brand that you would recommend, or do you would? I wouldn't recommend any. Do you recommend the oem?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I, I. We tend to be more oem orientated, because if you have a problem, that's the first thing they're going to ask you. You know. So, like, if your brakes aren't working or they're squealing or doing something, the first thing they want to know is did you mess with their system?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You know, and so you know there are a lot of cool brake pads out there. I think the MTXs are the ones that I'm hearing the most about. Um, but sometimes you know you can get the wrong pad. So Magura is notorious for making way too many types of brake pads and gets confusing. Um, god, who's?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:there it's like analysis paralysis you have too many to say, too many options, so you can't figure out what the hell to buy.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, there's another company that we used to do a long time ago. It wasn't cool, stop. I can't remember who they were, but they had gold in red.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, yeah, I know who you're talking about. I can't remember the name either, but I don't know why I want to say Ibok, but it wasn't it was it was something, uh, something automotive or motorcycle brand. Okay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I can't remember. Um, God, that's bad Cause I did run them for a while, but they were confusing also because they wouldn't name the same stuff. So you also get to this user ease of like. Hey, I just I either want them to last longer or I want them to um, you know quiet, be quiet. And if you came in and said I don't like that they make noise, we have an option. If you came in and said that I'm just wearing them out too fast, we have an option, or it doesn't it?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:doesn't stop enough. As soon as you get start start into a bunch of spectrums people start to freak out, so you don't have an aftermarket that you'd recommend. You've got mixed experience with them yeah, I would say you guys typically recommend to your customers the oem pads.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, yeah they they seem to be the most consistent and we got burned a lot during covid yeah it made us pretty gun shy because there was so much crap out there. We had brake pads that we were bringing in just because we couldn't get anything where the whole brake brake pad material would separate from the backing plate and just shoot out the shoot out the brake and so you'd you'd have no brakes, right? That's shit, it's really bad yeah. Because people were scrounging for any anything that they could get.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Right. So all right, I'm going to switch to uh to leverage your suspension experience here, Um, but first I want to ask you a question, Um, do we have in our suspension products on our bikes? We have fork in the back shock or fork in the front, shock in the back. Do we have dampeners? We have dampers.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:We don't have dampeners. No dampeners like a squirt gun. This is making you damp.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So we have dampers? Yeah, no dampeners.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:No, okay.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah. So for all of our fellow podcasters out there, it's a damper. Stop saying dampener.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You're going to make me look that up, because what if we're wrong? I know.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Well, like, we're going to look that up before we publish this, the suspension guru.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Even if we're wrong, I'm going to publish it like this that's fine, I I get twitchy about that because, uh, way back in the day my buddy just was, I was saying it wrong and he goes it's. Are you making things wet?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:and I'm like no, he's like stop saying dampener I'm gonna, I'm gonna google this while we're sitting here yeah, that it basically.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:This came from me working with somebody who was a um literary arts major and like would critique everything that I wrote and said and for grammatic, grammatic, uh, clarity, and uh, are you looking it up? I'm looking it up, yeah and it might be synonymous man, no man, I I swear it's not. We're gonna look it up and we'll put it in the notes both are correct, but damper is technically correct.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, dampener is like yeah, it's like a mister, you'd have a mist. Have you seen misters you can get for your bike? You can strap them to the front of your bike and they will make you wet and cool as you ride.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:That's a dampener hang on a second. So I got, I got, I got, I got an interesting. Let's read this here are you going off?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:of ai.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:No, yeah, of course all right, let's see here. So damper is only a noun, refers to something that deadens, restrains or depresses. Okay, a adjustable plate for controlling a draft, one that deadens vibrations, there you go. A dampener is someone or something that dampens, so a so damper, dampener, damper, oh, dampener can both refer to one that deadens sound vibrations, but damper does not work for something that makes something slightly wet.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So if you Wait, say that again so damper, like damp, like I'm damp, yeah, so damper doesn't work for something that makes something wet.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:But dampener does.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I think we've just confused the shit out of ourselves and our listeners. Right now, I don't think we have a good answer you know what else bugs the shit out of me?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:yeah, if your brake line for your front brake is run on the outside of your fork to your brake, this is just something you don't like. Oh yeah, you know how toilet paper should go over the top. I like it underneath. No, that's bullshit. It should go over the top, but how do you rip it? Then you just pull down.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:If it's from the bottom, you've got the right angle to rip it.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:No, it comes out like crazy. Here we go. No, it doesn't. No the patent. If you look up the patent for a toilet paper roll.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Are you fucking kidding me? I'm not kidding.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You can google that. But your brake line for everybody out there listening needs to go on the inside of the fork, and here's why, because there's bike shops all over the country there's. Half of them are mad at us and half of them are agree with us right now. Here's why we live in the desert. It's rocky if you fall and your brake line is on the outside it gets cut.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It can get cut If it's on the inside. It does not. Here's why it goes on the outside, because people line it up with a little holder on the fork and it points it towards the outside and it has to make a harder curve to go back to the inside. Yeah, and so they don't. They think that it should go out there because they're just following that line. Yeah, they don't realize the practicalness of it going on the inside.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And the design is actually for it to go on the inside, the appropriate design.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, the tricky part. So this came about with Marzocchi. Back in the day, when they were made in Italy, they would put their stupid cable managers on the back of the fork at the right, at the wiper. You know it would be back there. And what we found out later, because we're american and we have a, our rear brake is on the right, yep, and our front brake is on the left, right over there.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That was opposite and so it would actually flow correctly with a uh left or for with a right hand front break Gotcha yeah.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Okay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so we didn't know that Manitou did the same thing with a reverse arches. So it gets real confusing. But if you follow of like function over fashion, it needs to go on the inside so that you don't accidentally cut that thing open If you, if you crash.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, I mean.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:anyone that's looked at us knows that we foul function over fashion I, yeah, I mean I, my kit does not match my body, that's for sure all right, um stands, just came out with a new product.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Okay, uh, this is a, uh, a type of suspension lubrication for your fork. I think also for your shots, like the rim company okay yeah, that is designed to be put on your stanchion okay um I don't even know about this, right, it just came out.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I thought you might not.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, I thought you stumped me, yeah, so. So this is like a, like an oil that you put on your stanchion. Yes, it's supposed to help fix sticky whatever suspension products.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, so and.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I my hypothesis. You're going to say this is stupid, you shouldn't do it. What do you? I know you don't know about the product. You had to research it, figure it out. But like what is your thought about putting some type of lubrication on the stanchion, not disassemb? So?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:this has been around forever, pretty much since suspension's been out. Yeah, so they've had a stanchion lube, so I use Maxima and then SC makes a good one. Okay, there's a bunch of them out there. So, you're a fan of it.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:No.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I don't use it.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:But you just said you use it.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:No, I've tried it and I've tested it and it's a good product, but, like everything, it depends on your climate. So, for instance, what that does is it helps keep the rubber on the outside moist.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I like that word moist yeah moist, and it allows it not to like stick, and so I've actually used it more on droppers than. I have on forks to like stick and so I've actually used it more on droppers. Okay, and I have on forks. Um, the only thing is, if you do that, you just need to kind of take off the residue so it doesn't attract the dust here, right?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:so here we have this moon dust dust that is just so small that that that external lubricant can kind of get curled into the wipers and right, that's, that's bad and bring more debris inside okay so now here's the thing I do suspension for a living.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And if most of the wipers on the market are built to keep stuff uh, to keep stuff out, believe it or not uh, then, to keep stuff in.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:There's not a lot of force that's trying to force it out, but a wiper is built with a lip seal and then it has an opposite seal on the inside. Sometimes they even have what's called an energizer ring that holds it tight, and so kind of. They're two access doors, right, right, and so the one on the inside is keeping the oil in and trying not to let it out. It is doing a good job and it's protected from UV, so it doesn't tend to dry out as bad. It can get messed up with like cuts in your stanchion or just time. You know friction and things like that. The outside wiper is meant to keep stuff out, and so when you introduce a lubricant on that one, you, you may, it may curl enough under use to where it lets the dirt in and then the one on the inside is not designed to keep stuff out, so you don't ever put this stuff on I don't know, and personally I like a clean seal.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So and this is what I teach people in the shop is, I have like an old tube sock, you know, keep it in the car and then when I'm done with my ride, I will just kind of do that kind of buffer motion back and forth and clean my, my whole station and the wipers.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, yeah, I'm just kind of getting the dirt away so that, as it's being used, it's less likely to pull stuff in. But here's the key. I also service my suspension and that is the biggest thing that will help all of that, because there is a a foam ring and there is a process by the that the most forks are designed to bring moisture up to those seals and keep them moving and, in fact, when they're freshly serviced, you'll actually see some of that, uh, that liquid come out.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:That, yeah, we call it the weeping.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, weeping, yeah, you'll see those little rings.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, so that's normal.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That's kind of normal.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, okay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Um, it's, it's normal as far as if it's not creating a drip and it's not running down the side.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So if it's a freshly serviced, you'll see it, but if it's an shock or fork that has not been serviced in a long time and you a while, that's a bad sign and that's the time when people tend to put those products on and so they tend to go past their service interval and they're kind of trying to limp along but maybe not even realizing it, and they're not realizing that their fork may need service, not just this external one part lubricated.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Is there a general rule for how many hours or how many rides between services on the suspension products?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So there's two services on most forks. They call it a lower service and then a full service. For us, anyway, we kind of have a generic timeframe, because one company will say 125 hours on a full, or one will say a hundred hours, you know, and so we just say a hundred hours, uh, or roughly a year, um. And then the half service, uh, they say most companies will say 50 hours and some companies will really push you. So Fox really wants you to do that 50 hour service. We don't actually do a lot of those in the shop, uh, we do more full services, um, mainly because we don't have a lot of water introduced on our trails so you're not riding in in dirt, mud and rain and so there's not as much debris getting in because there's no liquid pulling that debris in, got it? The liquid is the transfer surface.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And then what's the going rate? Like I know what you guys charge, but like what's the going rate for these services typically?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Oh, man, man, I. That's something I actually need to go around and figure out around the country. It's like about 150 to 175 for a fork and then more for a rear full service.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Full service, yeah, um, a lot of bike shops can perform the 50 hour it's. It's not super hard. You just have to have a couple tools and some fluids and some a little bit of know-how. It's not crazy hard. Um, and so like, when we do a lot of suspension for other bike shops, we tend to almost never do lower service because I think that's something. In fact, I've gone to shops and shown them how to do, yeah, lower service, because I feel like that's something they can absolutely do. Um, we do the damper service and the air service and there's a lot of clamps and special tools, special bleeding systems and stuff. So it tends to be a lot harder. Uh, my biggest issue that I have is that when that shop doesn't tell you they say they serviced your fork, that's all they say, and you don't, you don't know if it's a fuller.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, they just don't educate you because you know they're either they don't know or they're just don't want to send it out somewhere. And then your damper blows up, so, like the dampers will take on extra fluid and as they become engorged inside the fork, they don't, they can't expand anything. There's rubber damper, uh, rubber damper, um, uh, bladders right, and so as they get more and more fluid, they can expand and then they can.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:When you say blow up, you mean literally well, not like fiery, no, they just actually pop, yeah, like a balloon, yeah, and when they pop they dump all their damper fluid. Your lockout stops working, your damper stops working. You can even get what's called hydro locking, where, if enough of that fluid gets in the lower of the fork, you can sometimes stop the fork from having full travel. And it's just bad, you know, um, and that is really avoidable when you get a full service, because the damper gets serviced and it gets a right amount and there's space for it to expand over that 100 hours of use.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Oh interesting.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So that's one of the big things that bike shops can do and sometimes if they're not paying attention or they just don't know, they don't educate the customer that that still needs to be done. And so they kind of say we serviced it, it was $100, right. And the customer is like, oh, it was a great deal, it was $100. And $100 isn't a lot, and or it isn't cheap. So you feel like it was a full service, but then two weeks later, you know, or a month later, your damper's not working.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Damper.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Nope and uh, and then you're, you're, you're coming to me usually because now you're freshly serviced, fork is no longer working and you kind of start skipping from the bike shop and go to a service center, right?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And you guys do droppers as well. Yep, what's the going rate for a dropper?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That also depends on the dropper. So some of them are cartridge based, which means that there's a sealed cartridge inside that's not meant to be taken apart.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Right.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And when that fails you have to put a new cartridge in, and the cartridges can be anywhere from $25 up to $125. Right, depending on the brand. And then on those cartridge base we tend to charge around $45 for the labor and that's pulling it all apart, replacing the cartridge. And then there's a key system and basically the sliding system, the stanchion system, that we go service.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, and then some of them you have to recharge, like with nitrogen or whatever.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, some of them you totally rebuild. Reverb is an example of that. Fox transfers some of the bike yokes, things like that, and those need quite a bit of service and they'll need a ton of parts and we'll go in and rebuild those. Um, they're not. Not all of them are meant to be shop serviceable. Some of them are service center serviceable, right? So when I say service center, it's somebody that's really orientated towards actually working on that product. They have all the correct tools, the correct the correct know-how, the correct training and versus a bike shop which is sometimes getting something they've never seen before. And there's good guys who know, or girls who know what they're doing and they kind of work their way through it, yeah, but they may not have the correct tools and, yeah, they're figuring it out, yeah, they're figuring out. So they tend not to do a lot of this stuff because it's pretty expensive, nuanced yeah, I mean, I would have met.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:do all shops have like a nitrogen recharge tool? That's an expensive tool, right I mean?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:it's expensive. There is no actual tool. You have to build it from the ground up, and that is the tricky part is like getting the right parts to to create this thing. Um, I'm not sure. I mean, I built mine with Fox, so they helped you, they helped me figure it out.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Whereas, um, you know, some there may be, you know, from the motorcycle industry there may be actual ones set up there. But of these adapters to use the, the nitrogen system, on different types of shocks, and not just one brand, but like one brand will have five or six different types, and then they'll come up with a new one every year, and then you have to buy the new tooling for that.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Right.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Right and so, and then the the shaft clamps, which are a big thing, that's really important because these are ceiling surfaces. The the shaft clamps, which are a big thing, that's really important because these are ceiling surfaces. So you have to have these special clamps, lots of special tools that are like pin tools, that are like exact, you know, like a three prong or a four prong, like I can't even tell you how many tools in the service center are. No bike employee would even know what they were if I, if I, stuck them out there right now uh, they're so different oh, that's interesting.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, okay, we were talking about droppers. Um, I want to kind of. You helped me with a dropper problem today. That was unique, yeah, and so I thought it'd be cool, cause you taught me something I didn't know.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Well, last episode we talked about, uh, the things not to do with them, or with, um, with droppers, with droppers, yeah, and so do you remember what those were?
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:yeah, so, uh, first and foremost, you need to keep your dropper post extended when it's being stored or transported. Yeah, it's good, because it increases the pressure when it's down. Yep, yeah, and I've told maybe a half a dozen people since that episode. People haven't heard it yet. Well, by the time this comes out, they will have heard that episode. But and everyone was like what are you kidding me? I thought you were supposed to keep them down. You have them all down at your house. I'm like, yeah, I'm an idiot. It's just good practice, just good practice.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I was thinking about this today on our ride, because I think about the weirdest stuff when I'm riding. But O-rings tend to work better when they're under compression. O-rings tend to work better when they're under compression and when they're under suction they don't tend to work well.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Okay.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so believe it or not, putting it under pressure the O-rings are functioning better than if they were being pulled up. So that was the second thing that you're not supposed to do is when it's down.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, you don't pick up the seat or you don't pull on the seat up when it's down, because that'll create suction yep, which is bad for the yep, which can pull air into the oil system yeah, um, but we were talking about um, this in the shop the other day when we were talking about bleeding breaks and one of the things like an avid system.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Sorry, I keep saying avid because I'm old, but shram, yeah, when you're bleeding, shram breaks is they have two syringes, one on each yeah and and they.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It's a push-pull method and one thing we teach is don't pull much. You know, you pull just a little bit to help, uh, with the one syringe as you're compressing the other one, because you can actually you can think you're getting air out of the system. You're actually pulling air into the system and you're pulling air around the O-ring and it's coming up into the syringe and you feel like a superhero because you're getting all this air but it's really being pulled in right at the syringe.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Interesting, so push. So whichever one you want to be pushing, yeah you push.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And then you, if you pull on the other one, you're just helping it along.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:You're not creating a lot of vacuum. Okay, that's very cool. I didn't know that. So, hey, look, that was a bonus topic. I didn't know that Right. What happened today was, um have had a dropper that had a cable internal routed cable that was hung up and I couldn't get the cable high enough in the seat post to like reattach the dropper. I'd take the dropper out or whatever, and uh, ultimately I think we're going to end up just going with a with a wireless to sell well for your circumstance.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, because I've got two different people that are riding the same bike, and so we're have constantly having to adjust the seat height, and that's causing problems with the drop.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:With the cable actuated dropper system another caveat to that is this is on an e-bike which, uh, the the housing goes across the battery yeah, and causes a ton of friction, whereas, like you know, on my rocky or something where there's nothing in the way, it's pretty easy to move it back.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, I've never actually had this problem on a different bike, it was just on this one, but I couldn't get the cable up far enough to be able to reach. I even got these long, like you know.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Uh, I don't even what are those called Hemoscopes or something like that? It's like it's really long. It's like long big ass tweezers basically.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, um, I'm glad you didn't know the name either.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, Like I don't even know what to call these things. My wife's family's all nurses, so they'd know it. They'd know exactly what it. Well, you tell the solution. Well, so the key is that your housing is in the frame in your seat two, where your post usually would be, and you don't have an easy way to get it to come back up so that you can attach the right length or to even get the cable started in it, depending on which way you're going, and it doesn't want to move from one side. You know you can't just shove it into the front of the bike.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I did and it just binds. It just binds in there, yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And then it's got the battery in there. That's kind of giving it a lot of friction, so it's just not moving freely. And so I told you to pull the cable out of the housing and then take a spare cable and put it through the front of the bike housing, which would normally be through the lever. But skip the lever and then basically it'll pop out. You'll see the extra long cable pop out your seat tube and then you can kind of grab that and kind of feed. Uh, because the the other end of the cable head is bumping up against the housing end cap yep, and that's.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:This is up by the cockpit now so like yeah and so the, the head of the of the cable yeah, it goes in from the top effectively. Yeah and then you have a stop there, and then you can pull on the cable with one hand yep and then you can kind of housing the other other one, and then I kind of just broke it loose, and then I was able to push it through, yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:You basically can rock it back and forth to get it, to get some free freeness to come through and that gives you leverage because otherwise you can't just push it through. And so that extra cable I I've ruined a couple doing that, but they're like three bucks, so it's not a big deal and they they help for doing that. And then once you get that freed up which you did, because the other uh alternative on these e-bikes is that battery is in there and a lot of times the battery can be in up against these cables and you have to start, you have to pull the motor out sometimes to get the battery out and I was on my way to pull the motor out, like I had the bolts out and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to pull the motor and the battery and all the shit out to get it.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:I was so pissed I'm like not a little job, not a little job at all. So this little trick we developed because of, I would say, e-bikes are the number one reason that we developed this. Because of that, we've also used it on a quite a few of like internal routing bikes that are real weird, um. So it's just a little trick to kind of give you some leverage and be able to pull it through, rather than try and push, cause as soon as you push it, it just kinks and goes sideways and then it won't go through.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:So okay, well, hey, that's awesome. Okay, so we're talking about e-bikes a little bit. I've got a few things on e-bikes I want to talk about. The first. I was riding up at Hawes on Friday. It's a rodeo weekend in Tucson, so that means that the kids have Thursday and Friday off school, so we have a four day weekend. It's in February.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It's like a holiday in Arizona because we're Western to have a holiday around the rodeo. And this comes from tradition, right? Yeah, absolutely so, back in the day, when kids would need the day off because a lot of them would have to go compete at the rodeo, right, and so it became a tradition to have rodeo weekend which there still is a big rodeo here in Tucson.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:I'm not a rodeo guy, so it's just a ride my bike day, but we like the days off, so it was actually. Thursday we went up to Hawes, uh, and we spent the day up in Phoenix or whatever, um, and wrote in Mesa and uh, maddie, my youngest son, and scanner, my oldest son, they were both on pedal assist bikes, lacey and I, my wife, were on just acoustic bikes and I was following. Uh, it is a lot of climbing up there. You climb a lot. It's actually a great. It's paid, paid to play.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:It's paid to play.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:It's great for an e-bike cause you can, you know, just get get to the top and then you haul us down. But um, so I was kind of far behind the group. Lacy's stronger rather than me, so she was up with the boys and I just smelled this like burning. Smell like an engine burning or like a motor, like electric motor is it a tumor?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:are you having a tumor? I was having maybe a stroke. It's a tumor? Yeah, I wasn't having a stroke, although I felt like I was having a stroke.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:but uh, I look up and there's skander my on this pedal assist bike and he's pedaling at about half an RPM per hour or something.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:He's got a cadence of 10.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:He's got it on turbo and he's got a cadence of five or something and he's just burning up the motor effectively is what he's doing. So when you told me this and I've heard this before make sure our listeners know. So when you told me this and I've heard this before, make sure our listeners know. Like I think, just about all of these e-bike systems are designed to be run with a high cadence. They work better if you're pedaling faster.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, I think that design is actually so one. What you're doing is the motors. So most of these e-bikes, the motors have been put into a gearbox. So, like Bosch, shimano Bros, like a lot of these, the motor is not a high torque motor and it's a high speed motor and it's put through a gearbox to change that over to torque and that's why they look like they do. The reason this is something that I'm more aware of than some people is because Rocky Mountains are different. They use a high torque motor it's still pretty fast, and then they have a one step down gear, which is a chain driven gear, and then that goes directly to your chain. So there's no gearbox on a Rocky Mountain.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Interesting.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:On the Dynamay or whatever, Dynamay 3s or 4s yeah.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So as long as I think they've been doing it, they designed that bike way before most bikes and so they didn't have. They couldn't just go to bros or um bosh and say give us a motor. They didn't exist, like rocky was out there before most, so they had to kind of do it out of the box. Um, anyway, that step down speed um affects the motor and so if you have a higher cadence, your speed is matching closer to the motor and the motor performs better and gives you more power.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And you're putting less strain on the motor. Yeah, and so hopefully to increase the longevity of the motor, yep. So, high cadence is better.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yeah, and high can be, because there's a new generation of motors right now which are giving you a lot of Watts at a lower torque, and so, like the Bosch SXx motor, which is new, yeah, and you'll see that on a lot of bikes that are meant to be really light but still have a lot of power, we call it a tweener, uh, so it's in between high power and the sls, right and um, it has like a 55, I think, newton meter power, which is lower than a lot of bikes, yeah, especially the full powers, for sure, um, but it has a 600 watt peak output and that is pretty much on par with the full power, like shimano's.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:But it works best if you're pedaling it fast. The key is you need to be at 90, so, like your rocky likes to be at around 70, yeah, um cadence, and these SX prefer around 90 to get the most out of them. So you got to be spinning your legs, you know. And now the crazy thing about this is pro roadies. A lot of pros know this already and they've been riding this way forever. And you see, pros, they'll do a high cadence because it's less impact, you're not using as much big muscle, yep, and you can get more out of your muscles, you can go longer.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:And so I first got my e-bike and was it taught me to be less of a masher? Because I was that. I was that guy that was like I'm gonna push the biggest gear, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get up to the top of the hill in the biggest gear than anybody else. I'm gonna get up there in my 11 tooth, you know. You know, because I want to just mash it and I just stand out that thing and like, just try and get up there, and and because that I don't know, nobody taught me, I just figured shit out and and uh, so what the e-bike taught me is higher cadence and it was funny because when I went back to my acoustic bikes my climbing was so much better, I could climb so much longer and have so much more energy when I got to the top of the hill, and I wasn't going any slower, I was actually going faster.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:We have a couple of really cool episodes, Dane, before you came on with a guy we call Wolfman Yep. He's an exercise physiologist or was an exercise physiologist. I think he's working as a realtor now but he taught us all kinds of things about your body and like how it interfaces with the bikes, and one of the tricks that he talked to us about was how increasing your cadence for the reasons that you explained, like where is out your big muscles slower is actually a better way to ride. So if you can pedal faster, you're going to, you're going to be able to ride longer and feel the same at the end of the ride.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Exactly, yeah, and that's what I experienced, just by accident, because I was riding my e-bike one. Uh, I was riding in a lot to recover from my broken leg Right, and so it kind of makes you, uh, do this higher cadence, you can feel it. If you do a slow cadence like Scander was doing, it doesn't give you much and so, like, if you gear down and get your feet spinning, all of a sudden you'll pick up speed. And he just didn't know that.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, he didn't know that.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:But then that higher cadence then kind of sticks with you, because if you're spending two-hour rides on your bike doing that, you're training your body to do that, and so the side effect was I actually ride my regular bike uphill much better than I used to.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Yeah, After Wolfman came on, I worked on increasing my cadence. One of the things I did was I got shorter cranks because I was having pedal strike problems. But that helped increase my cadence Cause I wasn't moving the, the, the circle wasn't as big. Yeah, um, that helped. But um, also, I used to ride a single speed and I don't do that anymore because it crushes my knees, but like that leads you to be a masher, I think single.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Single speeders are kind of the outlier because they they have to try and get the perfect gear for every trail. That's impossible. In fact I think one of the appealing things about single speed is, aside from the simplicity and the quiet and the just feeling accomplishment that you can do that that ride with one gear, um is that you get to kind of figure out, you get a little more in tune with what, what you actually have to to do to make it right on that trail. So single speeders will go to a trail like the single speed worlds that we have here or uh the single speed arizona that they have here.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Yep, um, they'll. They'll want to see the course because they'll try and figure out what gearing and they're cut.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:And they're cut not constantly, but they oftentimes will change out the gear ratio on their bike.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Sometimes they'll have them stacked on the bike, so a couple of my single speeds. When I got them used, they would have two chain rings on the front and two cogs on the back, and so you could switch the chain over oh, interesting and that way right, yep, yeah, mid-ride, so you could do bigger rides and things like that at that point, is it really a single speed, though it?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:is because you have to stop break the chain, or? Or you didn't have to break the chain, you just had to dislodge the wheel, move the chain over and then read you would have to have some kind of some kind of pulley or some kind of chain retention system right If they got slotted.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:So single speeds will have different ways of tensioning the chain, so sometimes they'll have a bottom bracket. That's eccentric and then that's a pain in the butt if you want to change stuff all the time, but ultimately you've got to get the wheel off to change a flat and so you can take the wheel off.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:Gotcha, and if it's sliding dropouts, then you just, you just retention it yeah, or there are a couple times where you can change that gear ratio and the chain won't chain length, that the chain won't change length. So you're putting a bigger cog on the back and a smaller one on front I gotcha, and the chain is the same length. And then some bikes have actual sliding drops, like you said, where, where, if there is a difference, it's so little that it's taken up.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Well, hey, we've gone a little longer than we were planning, so that's never bad. Yeah, let us know. We're doing a little bit of these kind of more tech heavy bike shop kind of bike specific stuff with Dana and I. If you guys are like this, let us know if you like this type of content. So far these episodes have performed well, so we thought we would do a few more of them. Let us know. You can send us a note, you can hit that, send a text to us right in the show notes right below, or you can hit us on Instagram or Facebook. And Mountain Cog, that's us and appreciate y'all you got any you got any final thoughts, buddy?
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgins:That's it, and if you have some sweet dad jokes, send them our way. We're not scraping the barrel, but we're getting there.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson:Don't worry, we'll never run out of dad jokes. We'll never run out of dad jokes.
